


Shutter Snap

by singtome



Series: Afterwards [2]
Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: As does Minho, Budding Photographer Minho, Cuddling & Snuggling, Domestic Bliss, Established Relationship, Flirting, Fluff, Gally still struggles at times, Gally's friends love to tease him all hours of the day, M/M, Overcoming Obstacles, Overly-Indulgent levels of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 10:39:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17405387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singtome/pseuds/singtome
Summary: "Gally thoroughly regrets the camera."(Or: Minho likes to take photos, becasuethat'swhat we're doing now. Gally suffers in silence.)





	Shutter Snap

**Author's Note:**

> This is:  
> 1\. Completely self indulgent Minally for the sake of Minally.  
> 2\. The result of me missing the After verse and wanting to see how everyone was doing.  
> 3\. Not quite a short drabble, but I set out for it to be, so that has to count for something.  
> 4\. Long-fics are _hard_ and I needed a break from post-apocalyptic Newtmas for a good, solid minute. 
> 
> Run through spell and grammar check becasue I am the typo queen, but there's probably still a few I missed. Minimally edited.

-

 

Gally thoroughly regrets the camera.

Actually, no, that isn’t it.

He doesn’t regret the look on Minho’s face when he handed it over to him (wrapped in burlap he’d found in the back of the car, heavy and solid in his hands), the confusion and then surprise and then glee. He doesn’t regret having been able to watch him later that night, Minho’s feet curled up on the couch, bent over in his lap as he pushed at buttons here and there to figure out what they do, brows furrowed and lip caught distractedly between his teeth. Or the happy laugh of success when he’d finally found the right series of buttons, and a flash went off, followed by a whirring of gears before the camera spat out a 4-by-4 photograph of Minho’s left foot.

The gift – found on a scouting trip with Beth, inside an old mansion sitting abandoned in the middle of the woods – brought out an almost childlike gleam in Minho’s eye that Gally has never seen there before. His curiosity and natural desire to puzzle solve had come out and, afterward, the testing process commenced. Snapping pictures of intimate objects in the house left and right (the bookshelf, Thomas’ shoes he’d left in the front room a whole year ago, the open window in their bedroom, and the hallway lamp) before Minho, finally, pointed the camera in Gally’s direction.

So, to conclude, he doesn’t regret finding the camera (or, picking it up when Beth had said, in her wispy voice, _Hey look at that._ ) and giving it to Minho.

What he regrets is the camera _itself_. The high beep it makes when as it warms up, the loud _ticks_ when Minho is scrolling through the photo album, choosing ones to print and, lastly, the whirring.   

The low, teeth grinding whirring that sounds like the camera is in pain as it pushes out a photograph, and the final, cut off _rip_ when it finishes.  

Gally told himself he would get used to it.

He is a dreamer.

 

 

The morning scene; sunlit warmed bedsheets, Gally on his stomach, hands under the pillow, shoulders rolling and spine articulating, slowly pulling himself out of sleep. Two knees on either side of his hips and a body seated above him. The click of a shutter, and the following beep when you view the photograph. The responding hum.

Gally presses his face into the pillow to stifle a groan.

“Minho,” he begins.

Above him, he hears, “Hm?”

“What’re you doing?”

More whirring, softer now, the sound of a zoom, “Nothing.”

“Doesn’t sound like nothing.”

“Shhh.” A hand on his spine, fingers dipping into the space between shoulder blades, thumb rubbing in a soothing circle, “Go back to sleep, it’s okay.”

For a minute or two, he does go back to sleep, giving himself over to the noises of the forest; the chirp of birds high up on the tallest branch of the pine trees, the rustle of leaves in the wind, and the chatter it carries with it from the village further inward. Minho is a solid and warm weight on his hips, and his hand is gentle on Gally’s skin, pads of his fingers tracing over moles and scars from the past. Gally is just teetering on the edge of falling back into blissful sleep, until.

 _Until_.

The shutter goes off, _again_ , and every atom in his body instantly becomes alert.

“Minho, I swear to shuck,” Gally says, groaning.

Minho leans down and presses his chest flush with Gally’s back, dipping his chin into the space between his shoulder and neck and nuzzling, allowing his breath to ghost over his ear. Gally would like to think that, you know, it’s been two-and-a-half years and therefore he would be immune to all the shit Minho likes to pull in order to distract and get what he wants. However, it is very early in the morning, he is very warm, and Minho, unfortunately, knows every trick in the book. Gally isn’t quite so immune, yet.

“You looked good,” Minho says, pressing a small kiss to Gally’s shoulder, and adds, “Morning,” as if it gets him out of anything.

“We’ve talked about this,” Gally says, twisting his hips and attempting to roll over. Minho lets him, barely lifting himself, and in no way helping. “That thing –” Gally points to the camera, still in Minho’s grip, once he has turned enough not to have to crane his neck to look at Minho, “– does not come in here, especially when I’m sleeping.”

Minho makes a face, adjusting his perch on Gally’s hips to allow for the new angle, but does not show any desire to move. “Did we?” he asks.

Gally lays his forearm over his eyes and reaches out for the camera with the other, sighing, “You’re such a pain in the ass.”

His hand blindly pats the sheets, even after Minho has pulled the device safely away, and asks, “Is that thing almost empty, yet? How much film do you have left?”

“Nope,” Minho answers the first question, and then, “I have at least fifty to sixty sheets.”

Gally drops the arm over his eyes an inch to peek at Minho’s face, and finds it smug, as expected.

To be completely honest, if Minho weren’t the love of his life, Gally thinks would have strangled him a long time ago.

“Put,” Gally lifts his finger and sticks it in Minho’s face, “that away. Please.”

They stare at each other for a moment longer, until Minho rolls his eyes and finally leans over to deposit the camera on the bedside table. When he returns, he drops into place beside him, leg slung over a hip, and huffs on impact with the mattress. Gally slips his arms around Minho’s shoulders and keeps him close.

“Thanks,” he mutters.

Minho shrugs, unbothered, and says, “I’ll get more later, it’s cool.”

Gally pinches the skin just under his ribs and revels in the squirming that follows. They kiss for a while, too lazy and comfortable to leave the bed even though they probably should for, like, productivity purposes, and other shit like that. Showers, maybe, those could be good. Food is also a steady competitor. Ira could be missing him in the garage, but by now he’s more than likely used to Gally showing up whatever time he pleases. Plus, he has Aris to help out, anyway, so he can deal.

With a sigh, Gally reluctantly pulls his mouth away from Minho’s to ask, “Do you have anywhere to be this morning?”

Minho thinks for a second before shaking his head, his nose brushing against Gally’s jaw. “No,” he says. Gally slips his hands under Minho’s bed shirt, lightly tracing his nails up and down his spine. Then, Minho adds, “I’m canceling it,” shivering.

Gally kisses his neck, “Who’re you standing up, right now?”

Minho groans, hiking his leg up higher on Gally’s hip. “Thomas,” he says, “But he can wait.”

“Do you know what time it is?” Gally asks, pulling away. Minho protests immediately.

“Sometime in the morning?”

Gally lifts his head to peek at the clock hanging on the wall just over Minho’s shoulder. It’s the one from Gally’s old house, before it was destroyed, the one with the minute hand missing. It was the only thing he had been able to salvage from the rubble. They keep it around for sentimental purposes.

Gally tells him, “It’s nine-something, maybe close to ten.”

Minho presses his face into the pillow. “Yeah, he’s mad by now,” Minho groans. “M’s’posed to be checking a new area today.”

Gally hums, brushing strands of hair out of Minho’s face. It’s finally grown back after he’d spur-the-moment cut it, for god know what reason. Now Gally can thread his fingers through it again. All is well.

“Which way?”

“East,” Minho answers, “One of the smaller residential areas toward Lyuban.”

“Okay,” Gally says, “Just you and Thomas?” Minho nods. “What time will you be back?”

“This evening, probably. Maybe later tonight, depending on how we go.”

Gally nods, pushing the anxiety down. Lyuban isn’t too far away – three or four hours max – and, above all, it has been two years, and they haven’t once run into any trouble. Also, Minho and Thomas have more survival instincts in the two of them combined than a whole army; they will be fine.

Gally says, “Did you want the log book? I – shit – I don’t remember where I put it.”

“You left it on the table in the living room,” Minho smiles, “and, yeah, thanks. Mine’s full.”

Gally smiles back, and kisses him once again, whispering, “You’re welcome,” and Minho sighs against his lips, and for a long moment, Gally forgets every single thing they just discussed. Thomas and Ira and the rest of the world can wait a little longer. Minho is pushing himself up his body and wiggling to the left, and Gally doesn’t realise what is happening until he is reaching out and lifting up, and the shutter goes off, _again_.

By the time Gally recovers from the flash and opens his eyes, constellations swimming in his field of view, Minho is jumping off the bed with a pseudo maniacal laugh. Gally just manages to swing himself around and slap Minho on the ass. Hard.

Minho shouts and hurries through to door to retrieve Gally’s log book, still laughing.

“I expect landscape shots and animal pictures when you get back, slinthead!” Gally yells through the bedroom door. Minho’s complacent snort is the only answer he receives. 

(Minho brings him back a photo of the horizon; green hills and miles of pine trees bathed in warm sunlight, a candid of Thomas with a scraggly looking dog that resembles Bark far too much, and a brand new pile of books.)

 

 

“Why don’t you just hide it?” Brenda suggests around a spoonful of cereal, not helpfully, “Since it’s bothering you so much.”

Gally lets his spoon drop into the bowl with a loud _clink!_ that splatters the milk into the air and makes Beth grimace. “I can’t hide it,” Gally says, affronted, “And it’s not bothering me, it’s. It’s fine. I don’t mind it that much ...”

Beth says, “You brought it up, buddy,” at the same time Brenda says, “Is this because you don’t like having your picture taken?” and Beth hums.

“He’s complicated like that,” Beth says – his best friend, the light of his life, the wonder of the fucking universe – oh so intrepidly. Brenda snorts into her bowl.

“Funny,” Gally glares.

Beth shrugs, “You could have just not taken it with you in the first place, did you ever think of that?”

“You –” Gally stutters, guffawing, “You _told_ me to take it!”

“Yeah!” Beth says, waving her spoon in the air like a grunge fairy princess, “Because I thought it’d get you laid.”

“Did it?” Brenda asks, eyebrows dancing, and Gally falls back in his seat with a groan.

“That,” he says, “is neither of your businesses.”

Beth snorts and knocks her elbow against Brenda’s, “It totally did.” Together they snicker, and Gally seriously contemplates why he remains sitting here.

“I don’t need any help to getting – I,” Beth and Brenda’s mouths twitch, eyes dancing, “I don’t –” Gally scratches his eyebrow, “I don’t have a problem with the camera!” and the girls burst into hysterics. Really, it’s a sight; Brenda’s head thrown back and Beth doubling over so far that her hair is in danger of falling into the cereal bowl. God. The worst thing these two ever did was become friends, and now between them _and_ Minho combined, Gally can almost never catch a break.

They recover, slowly, taking their damn time, with Munies on the opposite table shooting them strange looks. Brenda coughs and wipes her eyes. “Okay,” she says, slapping the table with both hands before, “I’m off. Rostered with the fishermen-and-women, and if I don’t get there soon Jorge will let the kids throw every single fish back, and we’ll all starve.”

She signs off the cheerful sentence with a beaming smile and stands. Her hand brushes across the back of Beth’s shoulders as she sideways walks between the tables and chairs to leave. For a moment, right at the end, her fingers catch in Beth’s hair. An action which would have looked accidental if her pinkie hadn’t curled at the last second around a long, silky lock, and lingered. Gally keeps his mouth shut until Brenda’s shadow disappears around the corner of the Cafeteria, and then he pounces.

“Beth,” Gally starts.

Beth keeps her eyes trained solely on her bowl, now empty, all too innocently, “Yes?”

Gally leans forward on his elbows, “Bethy.”

Beth groans in repulsion and whines, “Oh, _what?_ ” Gally wags his eyebrows, and Beth’s frown instantly deepens, “Ew, stop it. That’s gross.”

“Oh,” Gally says, placing a hand on his chest, “So it’s only gross when we’re discussing your sex life, is it?”

Beth, very carefully, brushes her hair behind one ear. “I don’t have a sex life,” she says, tone clipped, and as practiced as a ballet routine. Gally leans back in his chair and mentally catalogues all of Beth and Brenda’s interactions over the past few weeks.

He’s heard Beth talk about girls before, ones here and ones back in their Glade. She’d talk about “her girls” as she gently pressed antiseptic onto a cut on Gally’s hand, after a tough day at the garage. _None of my girls ever had scars_ , she said proudly, bandaging up Gally’s wound with the same practiced ease as Clint, _You know, unless they wanted them._

A reoccurring name that kept on appearing in Beth’s stories was Eliza: runner, abysmally clumsy. Gally is confident in his ability to conjure up a perfect image of her in his mind, based off of Beth’s descriptions alone.

Beth is upfront, fiery and unapologetically blunt. What she is not is subtle.

(If Gally didn’t know Brenda, he could paint a picture of her, too.)

With a grin, Gally reaches forward to rest his hand over Beth’s, “Sure, sweetheart.”

“ _Fuck_ you,” Beth spits, snapping her spoon in Gally’s direction so that it flings droplets of milk at him, “Stop trying to change the subject. We’re talking about how you’re scared of having your soul imprisoned forever in a photograph.”

“I’m not –” Gally stops, takes a deep breath, revives, survives, “That isn’t it.”

It isn’t the _whole_ issue, at least.

“Alright.” Beth drops her spoon back in the bowl and pushes the whole thing to the left. It makes a horrible screeching noise which echoes throughout the entire Cafeteria, “So, then what?”

“It’s just. Pictures are memories, okay?” Gally starts, and something in Beth’s expression falters, “And Minho’s been taking a lot of them lately. So there are a million memories scattered around the house at the moment, and I’m … I don’t like the idea that there’s a part of myself which exists just in memory.”

Beth blinks at him, eyes far away.

“I know, it’s shucking stupid.”

“No,” Beth says, snapping out of it. She leans forward and brushes her fingers over Gally’s knuckles, “It isn’t. Really, I get it.”

Memories are hard, for some of them. It has been almost three years since Gally’s memories began to come back to him in scattered fragments, and today he could less than confidently say he has 95% of them back.    

Beth asks, “Have you talked to him about this?”

Gally shakes his head. “He loves taking pictures,” he says, “Literally all the time.”

Beth rolls her eyes, “Yeah, because he’s stupidly in love with _you_. And shit, I’m not telling you to ask him to stop, I’m just saying talk it out. Do that healthy communication thing you guys’ve been working on. Also,” she begins, “This thing you have with the photographs, have you thought about how maybe it’s the opposite for him? Maybe he wants to make something that will exist _only_ in memories.”

 _Oh_.

Gally says, “Beth?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re awesome.”

Beth grins, eyes happy, “Duh.”

 

 

Paradise – playground between heaven and hell, St. Petersburg, Russia – is oddly warm in the Fall. The first week of the season always casts a bleached, sepia-toned glow over all of Paradise. The grass grows tall in the field surrounding the lake, stained a pale wheat brown at the tips. Gally works on twining a row of them into pretzel patterns while the others, swaying gentle and unbothered by his head, tickle his nose. In front of him, Minho sifts through a box.   

The end of the bedsheet acting as a picnic blanket upturns in the corner and catches itself against Minho’s hip. Gally stretches his leg out to keep it down. The other three corners flutter statically in the occasionally heavy breeze, being held down by 1. Gally’s book, one of the pile Minho brought back for him from Lyuban, which he has read through twice, 2. Minho’s shoes and 3. The Camera.

Distracted, Minho reaches out beside him to place his hand on Gally’s ankle, the other still fiddling around in the box; green, worn and torn, housing all of the printed photographs. Gally sighs, closing his eyes and leaning back on the palms of his hands, enjoying the stillness and quiet of the field, and the occasional sounds of the lake.

The moment lasts all of three minutes before a tap on his knee prompts him to open his eyes once more. Gally’s vision refocuses in the harsh sunlight to Minho staring at him and holding a square photograph in his hand.

“I like this one,” he says, placing the photo face up on the bedsheet, turned toward Gally. He squints down at the picture to find himself and Frypan, perfectly centered, seated on the couch in Thomas and Aris’ living room, laughing exuberantly. He remembers that night: it had been Tim’s birthday – or the day that Tim decided was his birthday – and they ended up hosting it in Aris’ house, with the amazing mountain view that he somehow had.

Gally had spent the entirety of their bootlegged rendition of _happy birthday_ with Minho sitting in his lap. Their fingers had been laced together as they clapped when Tim blew out his one birthday candle, leaning a little where it stuck out of a single cupcake. After a half-hour of talking with Thomas in the kitchen, Frypan, and Amy in the living room, and kissing Minho on the back porch, the night resonates as one of the best and happiest in his memory. This includes the part where Tim drank a little too much and attempted to streak down to the lake and skinny dip, Clint and Ira chasing after him frantically. Minho had laughed into his shoulder the entire way home.

Now, Gally reaches out and plucks the tiny photograph from the ground, turning it around in his fingers. When he looks up, he finds that Minho is watching his expression closely, and soon enough the conversation he had with Beth comes back.

Maybe Minho does need to take pictures in the same way that Gally doesn’t need to. Maybe, at the end of the day, it isn’t the idea of being trapped forever in a photograph and left on a shelf for decades, that bothers him. Like the pictures of the happy, smiling family in Gally’s old house. The ones that greeted him every morning and every night when he walked through the door; the wide, laughing mouth of the mother and the grumpy, curled lip of the youngest child. Maybe he just stared at those faces for so long he felt he became one of them.

Gally smiles, gazing down at the picture, and says, “I like it, too.”

The hand still on Gally’s ankle tightens, and Minho’s eyebrow lifts. “You do?” he says, “So, is that why you flinch away every time I try and take a photo of you?”

Gally, of course, flinches, “I don’t … do that.”

Minho laughs, once, “Oh really? So, you don’t mind if I …” He lifts the camera and points it in Gally’s direction, and Gally, on impulse, looks down. Minho laughs again, and Gally uses his outstretched leg to kick, lightly, at his middle back, and pull Minho closer to him.

It works, and Minho falls half into Gally’s lap with an, “ _Oof!”_ and an, “Asshole.”

Gally sniggers and buries his face in Minho’s neck, unable to help himself. Minho groans, nosing at his jaw while shifting to sit more comfortably between Gally’s legs.

“I like taking pictures of you,” he admits, fiddling with the hem of Gally’s t-shirt.

Gally slips his hands under Minho’s shirt and rests them on his lower back, pads of his fingers tracing over scars left over from before Paradise, that are slowly but surely healing, and sighs. Minho tells him this a lot, slips it into a conversation whenever the opportunity strikes. Gally _knows,_ if the dozens upon dozens of photographs of his face, and various body parts are anything to go by.

Gally reaches out and tugs the box closer to them, and begins to look through. Minho leans back and looks with him. There are blurry photos, overexposed stains of white and blue, and underexposed dark corners of a room. Photos including: the sunflower field, Frypan, mid pancake flip, Thomas running down a hill as he chases the dog, his body a blurry shadow as he sprints. Amy, head turned away from the camera, hands on her hips, red hair vibrant, Beth and Brenda with their heads together, whispering closely, Ira with his arm around Clint’s shoulders, and _Gally Gally Gally_.

Finally, he reaches the bottom of the pile and plucks out the one he had been looking for from the beginning. Minho, leaning back against one of Gally’s knees, focuses on it.

A photo of himself in profile, looking down and smiling, backlit by soft lamplight, eyelashes feathered over his cheeks, casting shadows. It was taken by Brenda one night when she managed to get a hold of it, and it is the only picture of Minho which exists in the entire collection.    

Gally says, “I like this one.”

And Minho, right at that moment, has the _absolute audacity_ to frown, scrunching his nose.

Gally almost falls over.

“What was that?” he demands.

“What was what?” Minho asks, attempting to smooth his facial expression into something neutral and innocent.

“No, no no, that face you just made!” Gally sticks a finger in Minho’s face, “What was it?”

Minho shrugs and tries to shuffle away. Gally catches his wrist and holds tight. “I did not make a face,” Minho says.

“You –” Gally pulls him back, taking grasp of Minho’s other wrist, too, “– made a face. Don’t lie to me.”

“ _Okay_ ,” Minho groans. He rises to his knees and uses the grip Gally has on his arms against him. He pushes forward until Gally falls flat on his back, grass tickling his nose and stabbing the corner of his mouth. Hovering over him, Minho says, “I just don’t like that photo.”

Gally blinks at him. “Why?” he asks, squeezing his hands, and slowly turns them so that they both lie on their sides.

Minho shrugs, making yet another face, “I don’t know, I just don’t.”

“Don’t like being in front of the camera?”  

“No, I just –”

And because karma is a beautiful thing, Gally reaches out until he feels the camera’s hard edges beneath his fingertips and says, “So you won’t mind if I just take another one now,” and enjoys the way Minho flails at him, trying to grab it. After a minor struggle which involved shoving, kicking, and some unsportsmanlike tickling that left Minho red and breathless, Gally successfully manages to wrangle Minho under him. He sits on his hips with Minho’s legs and hands trapped between his knees and (a little maniacally, he will admit) points the camera at Minho’s flushed, laughing face and says, “Cheese!”

The shutter goes off, and the orchestra arrangement of whirring begins, Minho’s groans acting as backup accompaniment.

Maybe Gally could get used to the sound, after all.

Gally pulls them away from the viewfinder to find Minho, trapped below him, rosy-cheeked and looking less than impressed. It’s sexy.

“Cute,” Minho says, tone biting. Gally winks in response, and he groans some more, “Get _off_ me, asshole!”

Gally puts the camera carefully to the side, back into its corner of the picnic-blanket-bed-sheet, “Oh, I’m the asshole?”

“Yeah, you are.”

“No,” Gally leans down, “I’m even.”

Minho tilts his chin away from Gally’s mouth. In all fairness, he probably deserves that. “You’re an asshole regardless,” Minho says.

Gally shifts his position over Minho to free his hands, and manages to capture his neck with a kiss in the interlude, “You still love me, though.”

Minho says, “That’s up for discussion,” but the way he turns his head into the kiss and brushes his nose against Gally’s betrays him.

The wind changes, and Minho starts and locks his ankles around the back of Gally’s knees as if the grass tickled his bare feet. Gally captures his lips and relaxes against him, and Minho’s entire body seems to sigh into it, hand slipping under his shirt once again. The crickets sing in the long grass and the fish skip in the lake behind them, and sunlight glistens off the gloss white of the photographs. Paradise lives on around them.    

 

 

_A photograph sitting above the mantlepiece, bright wash, blue in the light: Minho’s smile, head turned a little to the right, hair fanning on top of his forehead, cheeks flushed. A blur of a thumb in the bottom left corner._

_A happy memory._

 

 

*

**Author's Note:**

> They probably did it in the field, I don't know. 
> 
> Find me on [tumblr](http://singt0me.tumblr.com/)!


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